We have calculated the three-dimensional potential energy surface (PES) for the fission of compound nucleus 236 U using the covariant density functional theory with constraints on the axial quadrupole and octupole deformations (β2, β3) as well as the nucleon number in the neck qN . By considering the additonal degree of freedom qN , coexistence of the elongated and compact fission modes is predicted for 0.9 β3 1.3. Remarkably, the PES becomes very shallow across a large range of quadrupole and octupole deformations for small qN , and consequently, the scission line in (β2, β3) plane will extend to a shallow band, which leads to a fluctuation for the estimated total kinetic energies by several to ten MeV and for the fragment masses by several to about ten nucleons.